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(Telegraph) – FROM clips of Gordon Brown picking his nose on the green benches to the Conservative Party‘s long-running series of WebCameron videos, the internet is already shaping the course of British politics. But many are predicting that a general election will move the process into overdrive – that David Cameron will be swept into No 10 on the crest of the digital wave, as victor in Britain’s first internet election.

The primary example such commentators point to, whether to demonstrate the internet’s potential significance in politics, or to claim that Britain is behind the curve, is Barack Obama‘s election campaign. His team used the web to raise half a billion dollars from 6.5 million donors, collecting more than 13 million email addresses in the process.

It was certainly impressive: but leaving aside the very different culture of political funding, British parties aren’t as backward as you might think. If you imagine that every one of those email addresses represented a voter, it was the equivalent of a party having 3,000 names per constituency. A number of our MPs, of all stripes, already have more than 10,000. Indeed, given the tiny cost of email bombardment compared with printing leaflets, and its obvious appeal to underdog candidates, you could argue that we’re going to get a digital election whether we like it or not, purely because it’s so much cheaper.

But if you look at how the parties are campaigning online, you’ll see that it’s very different from the naked cash-grabbing of the US parties. The Conservatives have been concentrating on the web for longer than the other parties, and have collected half a million email addresses. But the thrust is not on bombarding supporters with requests for money or support – it’s a more subtle message: “Tell your friends.”

Yes, the party has bought a lot of Google advertising so that its websites and messages show up next to important search terms. But such digital billboards are comparatively inconsequential. The web that political campaigners are using is the same web that the rest of us use, one increasingly dominated by people making connections with other, like-minded souls. It’s a social medium, and parties know that the best way the web can make a difference is if it fosters conversations that users were previously too reticent to have.

The Unite union, for instance, has been getting its members to phone other members in key constituencies to encourage them to vote Labour – something likely to make as much of a difference to voter turnout, and the election result, as the £11 million the union has given to Labour under Gordon Brown. The Conservatives, meanwhile, have organised “watch parties” for David Cameron’s interview with Trevor McDonald, and will do so again for the leaders’ debates.

This is identical to what Mr Obama did with his own vast reservoir of supporters: using the internet to bring them together in the real world, and encourage them to do small things for his burgeoning campaign, such as delivering leaflets or making donations – most of which were used to fund adverts on TV.

Away from the parties, bloggers on the Left and Right are using the internet to make their voices heard at an unprecedented volume. That means that the tone of the election is likely to be influenced by a new set of voices – and not ones who are susceptible to the traditional, centralised messages of the old style of campaigning. The “MyDavidCameron” site, which produced a series of spoof posters of an overly airbrushed Tory leader, was set up by a Labour supporter with a sense of humour, rather than a member of party hierarchy. The nature of the online community means that such spoofs – or examples of politicians’ gaffes – can be created more rapidly and distributed more widely than ever before.

It is important not to exaggerate this trend: most bloggers are influential because their relatively small number of readers include members of the mainstream media and the political parties, while spoof campaigns are still reliant on official material. This fusion of new and old media will be on show above all during the leaders’ debates: as the three men take to the stage, in the glare of the cameras, the web will be abuzz with comment and analysis, with tweeters, bloggers and Facebookers shaping the debate and picking out every sleight of hand or deceitful statistic.

In that sense, the effect of the shift to a digital election should be that it encourages, or enforces, candour. Perhaps, though, it can go further. In the wake of the expenses scandal, the expression has grown that politicians are all self-serving rogues. Yet the web is at its most potent when it fully reveals the personas of the people who use it. To borrow the latest piece of jargon, the internet is a “disintermediating” force, which encourages users to present themselves with less artifice. In its forums and debates, snake oil salesmen have the most to fear.

Used properly, a web campaign can forge firmer, personal connections between supporters and parties than a traditional one ever managed. Whether it’s via email, Facebook or simply facilitating meetings, this digital election could yet allow the parties to do what they need to do most – reconnect with profoundly disillusioned voters.

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2 Responses

Maybe a little off-topic Ted but what is going on at the Echo. Their feed to this site has been dead for the last few days and now, when it is back, we have the expected Spink pieces – but are all comments being refused?

I have not (do not) post on the Echo site, but here there are apparently 4 comments – but none of them are being displayed